Thursday, May 30, 2013

he Orwell Prize is regarded as the pre-eminent British prize for political writing. Every year, two prizes are awarded: one for a book, and the other for political journalism. In each case, the winner is the short-listed entry which comes closest to George Orwell's own ambition to 'make political writing into an art'.

The prize was founded by Bernard Crick in 1993, using money from the royalties of the hardback edition of his biography of Orwell. Its sponsors are Richard Blair, the adopted son of Orwell, Reuters, The Political Quarterly, Blackwell Publishing, Media Standards Trust, and A. M. Heath & Company.

* 2009 Andrew Brown Fishing in Utopia: Sweden and the future that disappeared

2010 Andrea Gillies, Keeper: a book about memory, identity, isolation, Wordsworth and cake
2011 Tom Bingham. The Rule of Law
2012 Toby Harnden, Dead Men Risen
2013 A.T. Williams, A Very British Killing: the death of Baha Mousa

* Tony Judt – Reappraisals: Reflections on the Forgotten Twentieth Century
* Owen Matthews – Stalin's Children: Three Generations of Love and War
* Hsiao-Hung Pai – Chinese Whispers: The True Story Behind Britain's Hidden Army of Labour
* Ahmed Rashid – Descent into Chaos: The United States and the Failure of Nation Building in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia
* Mark Thompson – The White War: Life and Death on the Italian Front 1915-1918

The winner will be announced April 22 during an awards ceremony at the Foreign Press Association in London.